The Origin of Poetry
In our country of poetry, poetry has been the mainstream of literary history for thousands of years.
How did poetry come about? It turns out that before literature was formed, our ancestors compiled their experiences in the production struggle into jingle-style rhymes in order to pass them on to others or the next generation for memorization and dissemination. According to Mr. Wen Yiduo’s research, [Poetry] and [Zhi] are originally the same word. [Zhi] comes from [Scholar] at the top and [心] at the bottom, which means stopping in the heart, which is actually memory. After the emergence of writing, with the help of literature, there was no need to memorize things by rote. At this time, all written records were called "Zhi". Ambition is poetry. What is in the heart is ambition, and what is spoken is poetry.
How did the title of the song come about? Poetry and song are not the same thing. Song is produced simultaneously by human labor. It was produced long before the formation of literature and much earlier than poetry. When examining the origin of songs, we found that at first we only used exclamations to express emotions, such as ah, xi, oh, alas, etc. At that time, these words were all pronounced with the same sound: "ah". Song is a pictophonetic character, which derives its sound from "ke". In ancient times, [song] and [ah] were the same word, and the [ah] that people produced during labor was called song. So the name of the song stuck.
Since poetry and song are not the same thing, why were they later connected together and called "poetry"? This will be understood as long as we understand their relationship. Songs initially only used simple exclamation words to express emotions. After the birth of language, human beings' understanding of objective things gradually deepened and emotions became richer. Expressing with a few exclamation words was far from enough. So content words were added to the song to meet the needs. After the creation of words, the combination of poetry and song went a step further, and lyrics written in words appeared. At this time, a song consists of two parts: one is the music, and the other is the lyrics. The music is lyrical, and the lyrics are poetry and record events. That is to say, if poetry is paired with music, it is a song, and if it is not paired with music, it is poetry. The first poems can be sung with music. Songs are poems and poems are songs. Regarding the combination of poetry and song, there have been discussions in ancient Chinese books for a long time.
"Preface to Mao's Poems": "Being in the heart is ambition, speaking is poetry. Emotions move in the heart and are reflected in words. When words are insufficient, we sigh. When we lament that they are insufficient, we sing about them. When songs are insufficient, we sing about them. I don’t know how the hands dance or the feet dance. "The Book of Documents" says: "Poetry expresses ambition, and song always expresses it." This vividly points out the inner connection between poetry and song. Because of this situation, people later put poetry and song together and called it [poetry]. At present, poetry has become synonymous with poetry.